What are a new mother’s most pressing concerns? You name it: crying, eating, sleeping... veteran pediatrician Harvey Karp, M.D., has seen it all. And he tells new moms not to fret...

Most pediatricians focus on a baby’s medical health, checking that they’re gaining weight, having regular bowel movements and hitting the growth benchmarks.

But new parents have many more worries. For example, why is the baby crying? How can I keep my infant well? Is my child hitting normal behavioral milestones? How can I get my toddler to go to sleep – and stay that way for the whole night?

For answers, thousands of new parents turn to pediatrician Harvey Karp, M.D., one of the nation’s most-read authors of books and DVDs on raising children, including The Happiest Baby on the Block(Bantam).

Modern parents have it tough – tougher than their grandparents did, Dr. Karp says, because they’re raising children without a village.

“You used to have so many other people helping you – aunts, grandmas, your next-door neighbors and [their] older daughter,” he says. “Now we have very little help.”

As a child development specialist and assistant professor of pediatrics at USC’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, Dr. Karp has taught thousands of parents – including such celebrities as Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Pierce Brosnan – how to raise healthy, happy babies.

In this exclusive Lifescript interview, Dr. Karp shares his wisdom and 30 years of experiences on the hot topics that keep parents wide-eyed at night.

What are the biggest mistakes modern parents make? One big misconception is that parents need to make their kids independent right away and that babies need to fit into the family.

There’s this philosophy that we don’t want to over-coddle our babies – [that] babies have to give in and get used to being in the family.

The first 6 to 9 months is really about answering your child’s needs as well and as quickly as you can to build their sense of confidence and trust.

It’s called attachment parenting. Babies don’t need as much independence as they do need security and confidence and trust in the beginning.

How do you calm the nerves of new mothers and fathers? The first piece of advice is, just set things into perspective. Parents need to understand that they’re doing a job that’s tougher in many ways than our grandparents and great-grandparents had it.

New mothers and fathers are really on their own, and that’s tough in the early childhood years because they’re very labor-intensive. It’s important for parents to understand that they’re doing a yeoman’s job.

And the second piece of advice?
The second thing is that all babies are born with a calming reflex, a virtual off-switch for crying and an on-switch for sleep.

By learning some simple techniques, parents can not only calm their baby’s crying – even colicky babies – but they also can add at least an extra hour to their sleep from the first weeks of their baby’s life.

How can parents quiet a fussy infant?There are five steps for turning on the calming reflex; they’re called the five S’s.

Probably the most well-known is swaddling.

Probably the least well known, but most effective, is the use of white noise all night long.

What can new mothers do to help boost a child’s immunity?
Breastfeeding is by far the best thing to do.

How can they keep their infants healthy? To reduce the risk of illness, wash hands well and keep people out of the house unless they’re close friends and family.

Even then I suggest that people wash their hands and put on a big T-shirt when they come into the house to reduce the risk of spreading sticky germs all over the place.

At what age is it safe for parents to take newborns into public? Most germs aren’t spread through the air; they’re spread by contact. So parents can go in public [with their newborns] right away. They just shouldn’t go into confined places, and they should wash their hands well if touching things.

Opening doors, touching menus – all those things allow you to pick up germs, which you then pass onto your baby.

And when you’re in public, don’t be in crowded places.

What are newborns most vulnerable to? Infections and bad parenting.

They’ve never been exposed to these infections before and their immune systems are weak, so they’re not as resilient when they get an infection, the way an older child is.

And no one is a perfect parent [or] perfectly consistent. Babies are built to be able to deal with all sorts of differences in their parents, but they do need consistency, love and a parent who answers their needs.

When you build that, it becomes their foundation of confidence and allows them to deal with all sorts of other issues and stresses later in their lives.

Should parents worry if their baby isn’t hitting all the growth milestones? Milestones are just guidelines. Some kids hit them right on time, some are way earlier and some way late.

So when should parents worry? It’s a red flag when milestones are late, but it’s something to ask more questions about, not to be fearful about.

When a child is considerably late, a parent should have a conversation with their preschool teacher or doctor to see the whole context of the child’s development s and to understand if that’s a concern or just some kid developing his milestones at his own pace.

What issue worries parents most about their baby’s development? Their No. 1 concern is if their child is speaking late or doesn’t have good social skills – could my child possibly have autism?

More than 1 out of 100 boys is diagnosed with autism these days. That’s a terribly frightening aspect for new parents.

Why is the incidence of autism increasing? There are two reasons. One, we’re probably diagnosing it more accurately, but [also] because there are more cases.

My own concern – I don’t have any hard proof of this – is that it may be related to chemical exposures even before the child is born. Chemicals like endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which we’re exposed to constantly, may play a role in that abnormal mental development.

Is that why we’re seeing more autoimmune problems, like thyroid disease or juvenile diabetes? It’s related to that as well. Perhaps it is more common in hyperactivity and certain birth defects.

Certain cancers of reproductive organs may all be tied into this early exposure to a sea of endocrine-twisting chemicals that were never really fully tested before they were allowed on the market.

What’s the best way for parents to tell the difference between behavioral and medical problems? That’s a really broad question because so many problems have so many different causes. It kind of gets back to the milestone issue.

New mothers and fathers today don’t have a lot of baby or child experience – that’s why they’re reading books and magazines and going to Lifescript.

But if parents are concerned, they need to ask questions of people who can answer them – usually their baby’s doctor, the head of the school or somebody with a broader perspective.

Some parents worry that immunizing their children triggers other problems, like autism. Are these valid concerns? They’re tremendously blown out of proportion. There is no zero-risk life.

Every time you get in a car with your child, you’re risking their lives. It doesn’t stop most people from going to the supermarket with their child.

We’ve terribly over-focused on the risks associated with vaccines.

They’re not completely without risk, but they create so much more good for an individual family and for community, in terms of saving millions and millions of lives vs. cases of terrible harm.

Immunizations are one of the great success stories of medicine in the last 200 years and should be embraced and celebrated by parents, not feared.

Does spreading out immunizations over time decrease the risk?Absolutely not. In fact, some evidence [suggests] it may increase the risk because you’re exposing a child to more different vaccines over time.

The biggest point that new mothers and fathers need to understand is this: While it looks like we’re putting more things into a child today than we used to, in fact, we’re putting much less into a child’s body today.

And [it’s] in the order of 1,000 times weaker than the child getting the actual disease.

[For example, with] the whooping cough shot we used to give until the 1990s, a child was exposed to 2,000 different ingredients.

Now, it’s much more purified – [with] about five different components to it. So, even though we’re getting more shots, we’re actually putting many fewer things into a child’s body.

So many new technology-driven gadgets keep children sedentary. What can parents do to get their kids off the couch and more active? You want kids to be exposed to the outside every day.

Besides, they’re much more interested in playing with other children than they are in video games. So, it’s really a matter of making a commitment to get to the park or have your child in a preschool setting, so they have that social exposure every day.

Are You Ready for Your New Baby?Your belly is bulging and your due date is fast approaching. Your bag is packed, the baby’s room is done, and you have a name picked out. But are you ready for your new baby? Take this quiz and find out.

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